Gregg Fortner out as head of San Francisco Housing Authority

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, September 27, 2007

Photo: Liz Hafalia

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SFHA28_044_LH.JPG
The San Francisco Housing Authority Commission meets for the first time since they have been in the news. The director, Gregg Fortner, talking about budget cuts the commission has to deal with and the personal time commissioners take outside of the meetings. Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle/San Francisco/9/28/07
**Gregg Fortner cq �2007, San Francisco Chronicle/ Liz Hafalia
MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. NO SALES- MAGS OUT. less

SFHA28_044_LH.JPG
The San Francisco Housing Authority Commission meets for the first time since they have been in the news. The director, Gregg Fortner, talking about budget cuts the commission has to deal ... more

Photo: Liz Hafalia

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SFHA28_053_LH.JPG The San Francisco Housing Authority Commission meets for the first time since they have been in the news. The director, Gregg Fortner (foreground, middle), talking about budget cuts the commission has to deal with and the personal time commissioners take outside of the meetings. Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle/San Francisco/9/28/07
**Gregg Fortner cq �2007, San Francisco Chronicle/ Liz Hafalia
MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. NO SALES- MAGS OUT. less

SFHA28_053_LH.JPG The San Francisco Housing Authority Commission meets for the first time since they have been in the news. The director, Gregg Fortner (foreground, middle), talking about budget cuts the ... more

City Administrator Ed Lee will head a transition team made up of the mayor's staff, Police Chief Heather Fong, the city's deputy public works director and a representative of the city controller's office to find a permanent replacement for Fortner.

Earlier this year, the city commission appointed by the mayor that oversees the Housing Authority boosted Fortner's salary to $210,500 from $180,000 under a contract running through November 2008. A severance package acceptable to Newsom and Fort- ner was being hammered out in recent days to secure Fortner's departure, City Hall sources said.

"With much regret, the board of commissioners received and accepted the resignation of the executive director, Gregg Fortner, effective January 2008," said the Rev. George Woodruff, the commission's president, announcing the move immediately after a closed-door meeting between commissioners and Fortner.

Fortner said he will work with city officials on a transition, so residents won't be hurt by the change at the top of the authority.

"City Hall wanted a change, and I agreed with them," he said. "No executive director since 1986 has lasted as long as I have, so I must have done something right."

He said the failure of the Newsom administration and others at City Hall to respond to harsh treatment of him in the media made remaining in the job untenable.

"I want to thank Mr. Fortner for his service to the Housing Authority. I appreciate his hard work in these very challenging times," Newsom said in a written statement issued by his office Thursday night. "There is much work to be done rebuilding our most distressed public housing, and I am committed to making immediate and lasting change for public housing residents."

Supervisor Tom Ammiano said he has been told by Newsom staff members that Fortner's departure is the first piece of a wider remake of the Housing Authority, which also could include dismissal of some members of the Housing Authority Commission and other moves.

Fortner's departure wasn't a surprise to City Hall insiders - his disintegrating relationship with Newsom was increasingly apparent. Newsom unleashed a verbal tirade at Fortner last month after visiting Sunnydale, a public housing development in Visitacion Valley, and finding a city-built playground burned not once but twice.

"Let's put it this way, you do not want to be the director of housing in the next 10 minutes when I get on the phone," Newsom was quoted at the time shouting to Sunnydale residents.

A few weeks later, Fortner refused to comply with Newsom's request that all city commissioners, department heads and top staff members submit open letters of resignation. Newsom said he wanted the letters so he could begin his second term in January with a clean slate.

But Fortner wouldn't oblige, saying, "I serve at the pleasure of my commission, and they can make a change at any time."

Fortner is credited with stabilizing the Housing Authority after the departure of his predecessor, Ronnie Davis. Appointed by then-Mayor Willie Brown, Davis pleaded guilty in 2001 to wrongdoing in his previous job at the Cleveland Housing Authority. Davis was not charged with illegal activity in San Francisco but was criticized repeatedly by federal auditors.

"He was a hell of a lot better than Davis," said Ammiano, who shares the rare distinction with Fortner of being a part-time stand-up comedian, though he said the two really only talked about serious housing matters.

"I look at him as a valiant David trying to slay all the inequities in and around the housing projects," Ammiano said. "I think he really did try."

Sara Shortt, director of the Housing Rights Committee, a tenant advocacy group, agreed that Fortner was a marked improvement over Davis. But Shortt said that's a rather low bar and that Fortner often was defensive about any criticism of him or his agency.

"In some ways, Gregg has been let off the hook because he's been a vast improvement from his predecessors, but the tenants deserve more in the end," she said. "He certainly hasn't stepped up to take responsibility for problems or show a commitment to solving them."

Fortner, who came to San Francisco as Davis' deputy director in 2000, took over the top job the following year. The 49-year-old New Orleans native had worked in the Sacramento Housing Authority and the Los Angeles Housing Authority.

In San Francisco, he steered the widely praised redevelopments of two public housing complexes: North Beach Place and Valencia Gardens in the Mission.

But public housing developments in the city's southeast corner have decayed over Fortner's tenure, and federal inspectors recently deemed the Hunters View apartments in Hunters Point one of the worst in the nation. Sewage there bubbles up through grates in the cement; some units are infested with rats, mice and cockroaches; and mold and mildew are everywhere.

The housing authority is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and has seen its funds slashed by the Bush administration. The authority houses 12,000 poor tenants in 6,360 public housing apartments around the city and provides rental vouchers for 21,000 more people in private housing through its Section 8 program.

Local political control over the agency is exercised through the mayor's power to appoint the seven members of the Housing Authority Commission, which is supposed to guide general policy for the agency and hire and fire its director.

The Chronicle earlier this week spotlighted the fact that the commission has canceled a third of its meetings at a time when the agency is losing federal funds, can't maintain many of its decrepit public housing developments and faces a takeover by a court-appointed receiver. Fortner told The Chronicle the meetings were canceled because the commission didn't have any serious business to discuss.

The agency owes $15 million in outstanding legal judgments related to a fatal 1997 apartment fire and two sexual harassment cases. HUD has prohibited it from using federal funds to pay the judgments, and a San Francisco Superior Court judge appointed former Mayor Art Agnos earlier this year as a receiver of the agency charged with getting the judgments paid.

Fortner has been held in contempt by a judge and threatened with jail for his agency not making good on the debts, though that threat seemed to dissipate once Agnos was appointed. That appointment, however, is being appealed by the authority.

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